We love their food but they hate ours. We love to visit their country on holiday but feel they are ever so slightly slippery.

Britain's on-off love affair with France, which will be celebrated on Wednesday when the two nations mark the 100th anniversary of the entente cordiale, is confirmed by a cross-channel poll.

Nearly three quarters of Brits (73%) have visited France and we pine for the drama of the Alps and the comfort of Provence - the poll found that 76% admire the French countryside. Our fondness for France does not, however, translate into admiration for the French. Less than one in 10 (9%) feels an affinity with France compared with 24% who admire America and 25% who cannot get enough of Ireland.

We would also never trust the French with the family silver. Their net trust rating in Britain is a mere 15% compared with 55% for the Spanish. Our reputation across the channel is even worse - our net trust rating is just 4%.

The poll, a joint cross-channel venture carried out by ICM in Britain and BVA Institute in France on behalf of the Guardian and the newspaper Libération, follows a difficult period in Anglo-French history in the wake of the Iraq conflict.

The political warmth of the past 30 years, after Paris finally allowed Britain to join the then EEC in 1973, was swept away as Britain joined forces with the United States while France led the worldwide opposition to the war.

Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac attempted to repair the damage by calling for major celebrations to mark the anniversary of the entente cordiale, signed 100 years ago in an attempt to end the days of imperial rivalry. Mr Chirac and Mr Blair, whose grudging fondness for each other symbolises the fraught Anglo-French relationship, dominate today's poll.

Mr Chirac tops the list of the most famous French people alive today after 20% of Britons named him, although he will be a little concerned to learn that his great rival, the late François Mitterrand, is named by 5%. Great French figures of the 60s - the film star Brigitte Bardot (4%) and the crooner Sacha Distel (2%) - make the top 10.

Mr Chirac outstrips Mr Blair in popularity in Britain. Just over half (51%) of British people have a good opinion of the French president compared with 32% who have a bad view - giving him a net rating of plus 19 points. Mr Blair is on minus 20 points in Britain, though this is much worse than his standing in France where the prime minister is on minus 2 points.

If Mr Chirac has developed a fan base in Britain, he is likely to be disturbed to discover that 60% of Britons could not name a single living French person without being prompted. This will no doubt confirm the French view, held by 56%, that we are insular.

Tony Blair does much better on the other side of the channel, no doubt confirming the French view of themselves as worldly. Nearly three quarters (71%) named him in their list of top 10 Britons, well ahead of La Reine on 61%, the other reine, Margaret Thatcher, on 33% and Le Roi, David Beckham, on a mere 9%.

· ICM interviewed a random sample of 1,005 British adults aged 18 and over by telephone between 19 and 21 March 2004. The BVA Institute interviewed a representative sample of 811 French adults aged 18 and over by telephone on 19-20 March this year.